Night of the Spook by dxk2294
Armed with the newly minted Spookbuster™, our hero bravely ventures forth into the decrepit pit of ghosts and ghouls. Be warned, however, for the Spookbuster™ needs 10 seconds to cool down.
Gameplay
Fight back hordes of the undead with your handy Spookbuster and a selection of upgradable equipment, featuring gameplay reminiscent of Vampire Survivors and Project Lazarus.
Meet the Cast
| Name | Attack | Speed | Health | Description |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------|-------------------------------------|----------------------------|
| 
Player | Upgrade-able from 2½ to 40 HP/s, every 10 seconds | 7½ m/s | 100 HP, with 1 HP/s regen | Strong but Intermittent. — Powered with the Spookbuster™, you can channel meta-dimensional energy into an intense energy beam. But be careful, once a connection to a meta-dimension is established it will fire exactly every ten seconds forevermore! |
|
Bat Enemy | 2 HP, every ¼ seconds | 5½ m/s | 2 HP | Weak but Fast. — A bat from the nearby caves; quick and quick to damage. They want to say "Hi", and will not be ignored. |
|
Rat Enemy | 4 HP, every 0.4 seconds | 5 m/s | 2 HP | Average but Invisible. — Living in the local farms, the rats love to nibble on shins and are barely visible above the crops. |
|
Slime Enemy | 5 HP, every ½ seconds | 3 m/s | 5 HP | Persistant and Vengeful. — Oozing out of the train tracks going through the basketball court, the slimes aim to snag and trap the player the same way the train did to them. |
| 
Skeleton Enemy | 7½ HP, every ¾ seconds | 4½ m/s | 6 HP | Basic. — Ordered one two many Pumpkin Spice Lattes; they say it was worth it though. |
|
Player Zombie Enemy | 15 HP, every 1¼ seconds | 4 m/s | 10 HP | A worthy foe. — Your failed attempts, once laid to rest in the mausoleum, rising from the dead corrupted and determined to enact vengeance on their past self |
|
Ghost Head Enemy | 30 HP, every 2 seconds | 2½ m/s | 35 HP | The Rock and the Hard Place in one. — They take their time, can take a punch, and hit like a train. |
|
??? | ??? | ??? | ??? | Asleep and Waiting. — Rumor has it that a large, special creature lives sleeps in the forest, and will awaken if disturbed. |
WebGL Users
If you have a Mac with a Retina display or use Safari, we highly recommend downloading and playing the standalone app!
Ratings
| Overall | 92th | 4.073⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 67th | 4.109⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 498th | 3.418⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 267th | 3.982⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 95th | 4.391⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 187th | 3.843⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 286th | 3.4⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 167th | 3.952⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 93🗳️ | 85🗨️ |
The gameplay was a bit difficult because the Spookbuster did not seem to do much damage.
Good job!
Those status and health bars at the top were FANTASTIC. So thematic and pleasant to look at.
I loved the theme and setting. Anything that pulls off Halloween this well will get praise from me.
My only feedback is that it didn't seem that I was actually killing anything. Not sure I saw something die. But I was having so much fun looking at the level I honestly didn't care.
The controls and animations were all tight and completely well done. Everything worked with the style of the models to perfection.
Polish this up, add some content, and take my money on Steam please! 🎃
This was fun though. The beam really made the pacing for the game. It's just so fun to switch between running for your life and unleashing the giant doom-laser upon a crowd of >100 enemies.
It's an interesting twist that you only shoot every 10 seconds, but at the same time it felt like I had too little control. It would be interesting to try it out if the gun still took 10 seconds to reload/charge up, but you could hold the charge and control when it shoots.
Good job!
Good job team!
This didn't run too well on my laptop, so I'll have to give it another go back at my desktop. I kept getting drop powerups, but nothing for my spookmaster past the first time. Between that and the frame lag I was getting, I wasn't too effective in weaning the hordes ...
But heck, I had a lot of fun! I'll let you know how my next playthrough goes :)
There's so much to love here. Music/sound effects are on-point. Regular progression with randomized buffs. Tower defense style turrets. The feeling of fighting off an inevitable loss. I enjoyed lining up the hordes of enemies in time for the blaster to mow them all down and watch that XP pile in. Overall a really polished entry with just a *ton* of stuff to shoot and look at. Really great job!
My one problem was I was playing the web version, so take this with a grain of salt, but sometimes my cursor would move through the screen like it was pushing through molasses. It was a very weird sort of half-lag that made it hard to aim in time.
In terms of actual gameplay, I might've liked a little bit more to do. 9/10 seconds my only action really is running away. Having more pickups or more frequent turret drops would give me some more goals to achieve during my surprisingly long 9 seconds of down-time.
Congratulations on a job well done!
I will always choose to enhance Spookbuster. But it still seems to have very limited power.
I want SuperBuster
Great voice acting/whole sound design and nice controls!
Good job!
I really enjoyed playing this game :)
I think the game is in many ways better than the one we made :) and I enjoyed it... I was hoping that a train would come along the tracks and get rid of a lot of enemies :D
Took me a hot minute to realize how the spookbuster operated (without trigger).
I was impressed with the amount of detail
Fun game, and very impressive that it was finished within a jam. Graphics and sound were top notch, and it ran at a smooth framerate.
The enemies didn't feel distinct enough to me - I dealt with all of them the same way: run in a line until they're all lined up, then spookblast em.
Speaking of the spookblaster, it felt like any level-up that affected it was clearly the choice to take. The other upgrades didn't feel as impactful, partially because they all depended on deployable equipment you didn't always have.
I never made much use of the sticky grenades or force fields (whose behavior surprised me a bit - was expecting something that helped with my health.) I made some use of the turrets, which I fully upgraded after the spookblaster, but their use seemed anti-syntergistic with that of the spookblaster, which required you to move in a single direction for a while to line up enemies, whereas the towers required you to stay in a single area for a period of time (which was dangerous.)
Very nice work!